Keeping sane during the lockdown

A week into official lockdown has left many feeling tired, stressed, agitated, unhealthy and unhappy. Staying cooped up can have that effect and with additional innuendos suggesting an extended period of lockdown has reeled us in making us feel trapped.

In times like these, the best coping mechanism is to have a routine, yes the same mundane routine that we all wanted to escape. But the truth is too much of free time, leads to the disarray of time management and the novelty of it vanishes. So here’s the guru mantra of routine for you to conquer this lockdown wave:

Fix your Timings: This one might sound like a bummer, but establishing fix times for sleeping and waking up, eating your food (breakfast, lunch, dinner) will help you stay physically healthy. It also gives you a sense of control over your life when all else seems out of your grasp. Also if you follow natural sleep patterns, you will be better rested to handle the rest of the day and not disrupt your hormonal balance. Additionally fixing your eating times, will help you avoid over-eating or under-eating. This will also ensure you don’t end up snacking all the time, and you’ll make better food decisions. (all of which will ensure your physical health totality). This by the way also helps you keep your mental health balanced, and will result in fewer incidents of snapping.

Exercise and Meditate: Just because we are indoors, doesn’t mean you get to slack off. Physical exercises are required to keep up your immunity. Also when we exercise our bodies releases endorphins, that help us feel good and reduce stress, which is the need of the hour. You should keep an hour of your day to exercise, you can even make a fun activity out of it to share with your family. This will help you bond and dispel the energy in the body. Additionally, in times like these, our mind has more than its fair share of thoughts and worries to process, meditating every day even for 15 minutes in times like these will aid your mental wellbeing as well as physical.

Learn something: many of us now have free time, which should be a great opportunity to invest in ourselves. Instead of binge-watching, we can use the internet to our advantage. We all have those little hobbies that we never could make the time for. We can use this time for it, you can learn to cook if you don’t already know, you could take online dancing classes, guitar lessons, crotchet. How about that book you wanted to read or even coloring with your kids. Learning something new or completing a task will give you a sense of accomplishment. This makes your mind grow stronger and improves mental wellbeing not to mention it will reduce the number of negative thoughts, and lead to positivity.

This war that we are fighting is equally mentally challenging as it is physically tiring. And a simple routine of your making will help you stay calm, focused and happy provided you utilize your time effectively. A routine will make us come out of this stronger and better. So get going.